ABSTRACT
Curative and preventive developments in acute and chronic diseases have been obtained in the last two decades. Through research and development activities, physicians have risen to the challenge of resolving difficult problems. Medicine has indeed reached new pinnacles in providing benefits to patients, but the care provided today is also highly complex. Concerns now being raised about patient care have been buttressed in part by well-performed studies that suggest that physicians do not consistently apply available knowledge in the care of patients and that uncertainty about the most effective diagnostic and therapeutic approaches is pervasive (Brahams, 1988; Brittain, 1985; O'Leary, 1988; Silverman, 1994).
